


Hit Me With Your Words

by Chromi



Series: Deuce-centric [3]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Asphyxiation, Canon Universe, Consensual, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hair-pulling, Hurt, M/M, Moving On, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Marineford, Regret, Rough Sex, Self-Destruction, Slapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:54:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21707062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromi/pseuds/Chromi
Summary: It was tohelphim, Marco had convinced himself. This treatment – the slapping of flesh, the pulling of hair, the sex, thesexafter loving another so completely that Marco had sworn he would die without touching anyone again, the most disgusting ofhatehissed into the ear of a man who was already so tormented by his own self-loathing – this was to save Deuce. Twisted, it was, and demented. Yes, it was to set the young man free of his own sorrow, to break him out of whatever shell had formed upon Ace’s tragic death, to help him get back to who he had been before it had all gone wrong.Marco was healing Deuce in his own vile way.
Relationships: Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco & Portgas D. Ace, Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco/Masked Deuce, Masked Deuce & Portgas D. Ace
Series: Deuce-centric [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576678
Comments: 18
Kudos: 37
Collections: Dicks Out For Ace’s Death





	Hit Me With Your Words

**Author's Note:**

> This is something that I think about a lot... how Marco and Deuce would have dealt with Ace's death together (assuming Deuce ever made it back with the crew, of course). I could very happily spend a good 20k words on this idea and do it thoroughly, but alas, other fics require my attention; I just wanted to get this idea out _so badly_ , so... have this.
> 
> This was inspired by [because he is trying to kill you (and you deserve it, you do, and you know this)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20794070) by [Irrelevancy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irrelevancy/pseuds/Irrelevancy) (who is an incredible author). I got the courage to actually write this after re-reading her work!
> 
> Rarepair af but honestly just end me right here right now because _they work_.

Marco had known he would come for him.

Somehow, without ever fully acknowledging it properly because it always simply _was,_ Marco understood that Deuce would seek him out sooner or later.

It was the guilt, he knew. The same guilt that he shared with the other doctor. Survivor’s guilt. Trapped in his own head with no outlet, the pain and the grief roiling and festering, anchoring into neurons and white matter to disintegrate and leave behind a fetid concoction of hate, fear, blame.

The fear of owning up to the fact that _neither of them_ had done anything to help. Nothing to change the swing of fate’s pendulum at the opportune moment. Both rooted to the spot, mouths agape and bodies tense, then weak, then crumpled, useless as their souls.

He hadn’t cut his own hand off to free himself of the cuff. He had panicked, as Deuce had so kindly pointed out in a fit of agonised _rage_ of the likes that Marco had never seen before. He had been so close, _right fucking there_ , and he had failed spectacularly.

 _Where were you, then, rejected first mate? You, who proclaimed himself to be ready, nay, **willing**_ _to die for your former captain at any point, as and when required. You, who offered up your life so easily in prose and yet stumbled over the enormity of your pitiful ego when faced with the reality of death._

Hurting his own brothers didn’t come naturally. It didn’t come at all, in all honesty.

Or so Marco had thought.

Or so Marco had sincerely believed right up until the point where Deuce forced it out of him several months after Marineford.

It was to _help_ him, Marco had convinced himself. This treatment – the slapping of flesh, the pulling of hair, the sex, the _sex_ after loving another so completely that Marco had sworn he would die without touching anyone again, the most disgusting of _hate_ hissed into the ear of a man who was already so tormented by his own self-loathing – this was to save Deuce. Twisted, it was, and demented. Yes, it was to set the young man free of his own sorrow, to break him out of whatever shell had formed upon Ace’s tragic death, to help him get back to who he had been before it had all gone wrong.

Marco was healing Deuce in his own vile way.

In the way that was begged of him one night. When Deuce had silently shut the bedroom door behind himself and shrugged off his jacket without a word. Marco had known it was coming for weeks; Deuce was easy to read, always so open and _obvious_ right from the moment they had met as first mate to first mate. Even back then, when Deuce had snarled and spat and _screamed_ that he would kill Marco if he hurt Ace.

So honest.

So adorable.

…So vulnerable to the inclinations and half-formed desires that had taken root in Marco’s mind that day. The vague ideas of stuffing that vulgar mouth full, of filling his throat so perfectly he couldn’t breathe, never mind _speak_ , and _wreck_ that blinding loyalty out of him.

But Marco didn’t enjoy hurting those dear to him. And that was precisely what Ace and Deuce had become alarmingly quickly.

His sworn-in brother. His favorite student. His golden boy whose smile rivalled Ace’s in those moments where the cloud of confusion finally lifted and he understood what Marco was teaching him.

He who morphed to become Marco’s new outlet. His new release to be found in Deuce’s choked off moans and shuddering breaths. A new body to fuck and to touch and to bite, but never to love.

The sex was, admittedly, incredible, each evolution of their bizarre relationship offering something new and wonderful – something worse, more painful, like a bruise that refused to heal. Deuce came to him with an honesty that Ace hadn’t possessed – an inability to hide whatever he was thinking, what he needed, all soft noises and tremulous sighs and fingers twisting into sheets each time Marco wrought his second orgasm out through sobs of overstimulation. He felt different to Ace – softer, muscular yet not quite as lean, and _so much tighter_ – and it took time to come to terms with the fact that _Deuce was not Ace_.

But he would have to do.

It seemed that the same applied to Deuce. Marco was not Ace. Marco was not who Deuce missed, who Deuce had loved in secret for over three years, who Deuce had yearned for and broken himself over each day since his departure – since his death.

Who Marco had stolen from him in body and mind.

So this, in a sense, was as much revenge for Deuce as it was release, of healing from yet feeding the grief simultaneously. Taking for himself what would never be given to Ace again.

For weeks it continued. Deuce would arrive after dark, never the one to make the first move towards the inevitable, as if to do so would be to admit that he was doing something for the sake of laying his conscience to rest— however that may be achieved. Like he didn’t deserve closure.

And yet he opened under Marco _so beautifully_ , submissive and pliant in ways that Ace had never been, each time successfully luring Marco into a false sense of make-believe that perhaps tonight, Deuce would not play his game and make them both suffer.

_They both deserved it. They both deserved to be punished and to hate._

“Make it hurt,” Deuce gasped that first night – each night that followed, “I don’t deserve _comfort_. Neither do you.”

Forever at odds with the softness of his flushed features, the tears clinging to his long, dark eyelashes, his kiss-swollen lips that were plush and wet to the pad of Marco’s thumb.

A seething, deep-seated need to _punish_ them both; a darker way of healing.

A way that Marco began to find himself agreeing was for the best.

“Choke me,” Deuce demanded. Marco complied. Marco later teared up as he came down from the most intense orgasm he had ever experienced – more blinding and brilliant than _anything_ he’d ever had with Ace, he was loath to admit – healing the vicious purple bruises circling Deuce’s throat like a morbid necklace of clear-cut misery while Deuce lay silent— tear-stained and unconscious from asphyxiation, his abdomen and chest covered in the evidence of loveless passion. He was cleaned up with a tenderness that Marco would never dare show him when lucid, left to come to at his own pace only to ask Marco for the impossible and _do it again_.

 _Break me. Defile me. Tell me it should have been me to take the hit and die for Ace_.

Against his better judgement, Marco did what was asked of him. He destroyed where he was supposed to heal, reminding himself repeatedly that this _was_ healing for Deuce. The cruellest of words left his lips, mouthed into tense shoulders and sweat-damp hair, picking apart the student who he had so carefully built up and cultivated, nurtured and cared for. Reducing him back down to a mess of shaking thighs and a heaving chest, lying in his own cum with Marco’s trickling out of his body, undoubtedly hating himself beyond measure as he gasped for breath.

Rejection bit at Marco whenever he tried to apologise, to lay care onto Deuce and simply hold him. Deuce wouldn’t accept it, leaving immediately without a word, hair dishevelled and clothes barely pulled back on in his desperation to _get away_.

The nights that followed the commanders’ meetings were the worst. Now that Deuce had replaced Marco as first division commander there was no escaping his gaze of burning intensity, judging each and every decision that Marco made and issued. Deuce would not let him falter. He would see to it that Marco never even entertained the thought of being audacious enough to show weakness in front of the others, to veer off a course that Whitebeard himself would have chosen.

Giving Deuce the job of divisional commander was all part of their game; it was inconceivable to suggest that Deuce didn’t know exactly what Marco’s thought processes were here. Rank him at Ace’s level; give him the title that Marco had held. Hold him to the expectations and the pressure that the two before him had once navigated.

But whatever Deuce needed in order to get better, Marco would provide. Breaking him down to his foundations to allow him to rebuild from scratch, he supposed.

When Deuce ordered him to slap, he would slap. When Deuce sneered and asked if that was all the _great and mighty captain_ could hope to offer, Marco hit him again with the first trace of something akin to _anger_ and split Deuce’s lip. Left handprints on his ass from the assault he rained down on the heated, trembling skin while prising him open without sufficient preparation.

It had to hurt. It _had_ to _hurt_.

Marco was left sick with himself – sick from having cum after pulling Deuce’s spine into a tight arch by his hair. Disgusted by how he had _liked_ the feeling of Deuce jumping under him from the harsh _slap_ , the rough fucking, the _sounds_ he had made from having a well-oiled cock shoved to the hilt inside his barely prepared body. The salt of Deuce’s tears would not leave Marco’s tongue anytime soon, rendering Marco _thirsty_.

And so they drowned together, pulling one another further away from the light, forgetting quite entirely over the course of weeks, months, what it meant to save, to heal, to repent and find a way back. There was only blame; there was only loss and distress—

—felt keenly, like a knife shoved into his gut, the night Deuce threw back his head and moaned Ace’s name when Marco struck him _just right_ inside.

He knew full well what he was doing, how this had to affect Marco; months into their nightly fucking they _knew_ each other quite unlike they had ever dreamt of (unlike how they had ever wanted). Deuce knew of the pain he caused.

So he did it again, slapping hips to groin and riding Marco at a furious pace, hands gripping Marco’s to guide them up his own body, forcing him to touch, to acknowledge yet again and once and for all that _he was not Ace_.

“ _Ace_ ,” Deuce all but sobbed, keeping Marco’s hands where he wanted them, shivering in anticipation of his oncoming bliss, “ _Ace_ , I— _ah_ — gonna come—”

Such an insult. Such an outright _fuck you_ to Marco, an absolute display of the inability to let go, to do precisely what they had fooled themselves into thinking they were still trying to achieve. This was no longer about mending and growing from the ashes; this was about power, and damnation, and Marco had been too blind to see it building from the moment he had first pulled Deuce against him and kissed him.

Deuce’s back hit the mattress before he knew what was happening, a rushed hiss of a yelp knocked from him with the force of it. A hard, brutal snap of hips forward; a twist of Marco’s pelvis, grinding his cock into all of Deuce’s highly sensitive spots had him clawing at Marco’s back, gasping for air as the room was illuminated by blue flames.

“You have no idea what it felt like to get fucked by Ace,” Marco growled, bending Deuce’s legs back so far his knees almost touched his ears; he could reach so much deeper at this angle, pounding into this mere idiot _boy_ – 22 was no age to be thinking he could win at mind games; not now, not _ever_ – and all the anger, the resentment, that fierce desire to _wreck_ that which remained of what Ace had loved that Marco had kept buried came pouring out, “what it felt like to have him bite at the inside of your thighs as he held them up. How _good_ he fucked, like I’m fucking you right now.”

Blunt nails dragged down the side of Marco’s neck, eliciting another flash of blue and a soft hiss of pain. With speed that was usually reserved for the battlefield Marco had Deuce’s hands pinned by the wrists to the bed, a cocky, wry grin curving his lips when Deuce struggled and arched with a gasp.

“You will never get to kiss him,” Marco continued, voice pitching higher as he withheld a laugh that tipped into almost manic; it was wrong, a part of his brain told him, so _wrong_ to hurt Deuce _like this_ , but he was free now, the restraints gone, undone the second Deuce had thought that this was in anyway _okay_. “You will never hear him moan your name as he cums inside you, or know what it feels like to be _filled_ by him.” Deuce jerked in his hold, lower lip bitten between teeth in what looked like an attempt to fight back a moan of his own; he was _so hard_ against Marco’s stomach, sliding wet and throbbing with every thrust – “You only have me, who can tell you _in detail_ what Ace was like.”

It didn’t go to plan; Deuce didn’t break. Didn’t cry like Marco would have bet his life he would. Didn’t demand that Marco stop, that this was tearing him apart, that he couldn’t do this anymore and would finally leave Marco with nothing but memories and shame—

“Yeah?” Deuce panted, the sound fucked out of him, stuttering in his throat, “well, you only— only have me, too. What u-use are memories now, huh? At least I can— can pretend it’s him when I close my eyes – for all I know, this is _exactly_ how he would have— _oh_ —”

And he did it again – one last metaphorical slap in the face in the form of arching, going rigid, and hissing Ace’s name as he shuddered through his orgasm, clamping down on Marco’s cock.

Marco had never despised someone quite like this as he followed, joining Deuce in his insane challenge, his _game_ , and moaning Ace’s name to his sweat-slicked chest, allowing himself for the barest of seconds to slip into the fantasy that it was Ace clinging tight around him, Ace’s legs over his shoulders, and Ace’s _heat_ that he missed so dearly.

Misery tore at him instantly, the gap between what Ace had been and what Deuce currently was being too much. This was a step too far, after all.

For both of them.

Deuce cried properly for the first time while they lay together, calming down from their highs, the expected reaction delayed yet showing itself nonetheless – when he began to _sob_ like his heart was breaking, when he shook and heaved and gulped wet around the spasms of his throat working to suffocate him, Marco wondered if he had made a huge, terrible mistake all along. He was breaking – Marco was fairly certain – perhaps repeating back Marco’s bitter words in his mind and re-evaluating what they meant without the ecstasy of an impending orgasm to filter through. He had hurt him, Marco knew, possibly finally accomplishing what Deuce may well have been looking for on that first night all those months ago.

Regardless of what Deuce had been attempting to achieve, Marco had done what he had always considered unthinkable and had genuinely hurt one of his own.

“This needs to stop,” Marco said quietly, gently lifting Deuce’s mask off his face to wipe his thumbs over his tears, cradling his sodden cheeks, “all of this. The blame. The hate. The sex. None of this will ever bring him back. We can’t move on like this.”

Much to his surprise, Marco found himself being hugged tightly, his body canting forwards in Deuce’s hold, causing them to butt foreheads inelegantly. But it didn’t matter – all that mattered was calming his commander, his brother, his friend. His stomach roiled with misery, hating himself for being the one to reduce the other man to such a state of despair.

But maybe some good could come from this. Maybe this really had been what Deuce needed, and Marco was simply the vessel in which to deliver the final blow. He didn’t know. He wouldn’t know until Deuce calmed down.

“I’m sorry,” Deuce whispered against Marco’s neck, his grip unrelenting, keeping Marco close (and more pressingly, _still inside him),_ “I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s okay. I'm sorry, too.”

“I provoked you.”

He knew. “I did, too.”

“I’ve hurt you,” Deuce’s mouth curved down like he was about to lapse back into sobs.

“That was kind of the point, wasn’t it?” was what Marco said instead of something far more revealing of his ever-shifting state of mind. “I hurt you, as well,” more deeply than he surely should have allowed himself to; worse than he ever would again.

“I just— I love him _so much_.” So did he. God, so did he. “And I love you, too.” Marco relaxed a little against Deuce at this – he couldn’t mean it in the same way as he loved Ace. That kind of love only came around once in a lifetime, Marco knew, seeing as it was the kind of love he had felt for Ace himself. And yet he had selfishly claimed that love, never giving Deuce the chance to experience it with Ace.

He had so much repenting to do, didn’t he?

“I don’t want this to stop,” Deuce confessed, swallowing noisily when Marco leaned back enough to look at him properly, “I don’t want to stop sleeping with you. For us to go back to…” he paused, looking incredibly embarrassed for the first time in a _long_ time, from way back before Marco had first licked him open or managed to talk Deuce into straddling his face. He looked kind of cute like that… a different sort of softness to him than what Ace had had in moments of bashfulness, but endearing nonetheless. He had never really stopped to think about how cute Deuce could be.

That maddening flash of hate had long dissipated, leaving only Marco’s usual care, his need to comfort, that he had fought against for months. The man below him was his _friend_ , for goodness’ sake, his previous student, someone he trusted and respected as a doctor and as an individual. Not an extension of Ace; not anymore. Never again.

“Then do you…” Marco hesitated, suddenly finding his words stuck like wool to his tongue. Clearing his throat, he continued, “would you want to try it normally?”

Deuce frowned at him. “What?”

“Try having regular sex, I mean. Without the roughness and the… whatever the hell we’ve been doing.” Deuce’s eyebrows shot up, his eyes widening in surprise. “You know,” Marco said a little desperately, “just us. Just you and me. No guilt, no pain, no…” _No Ace_. “No shitty attempts at mind games.” Ah, Deuce at least had the decency to look sheepish at that.

“Maybe,” Deuce said after a pause, averting his gaze from Marco’s cool blue. “Probably.”

And just like that, it all came to an end. Every negative emotion that the two held for each other – all of the sadness and the bitter accusations, the need to lash out and demand to know _why_ to questions that could never be answered – finally stopped. There _were_ no explanations. There was no turning back time. And there was to be no such thing as truly moving on or forgiving – each other, yes, but not Teach. Not Akainu. Not any of them. Marco was not to blame, and Deuce couldn’t be held accountable. This was not something that could ever be solved through ripping each other – or themselves in their minds – to shreds, never learning a truth that hadn’t existed in the first place.

Their first step would be to visit his grave together and mourn openly without the pressures of appearances maintained in front of the rest of the crew.

Just the two of them, hand in hand.

The two men who had loved their Sun more completely than he could have ever known.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Tumblr](https://aishitekuretearigatou.tumblr.com/) if you want to come say hi!
> 
> Comments and kudos let me know if I'm doing something right, and I always love your feedback!


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